[111.08] A New Analytical Solution for the Structure of Radiation-Dominated Pulsar Accretion Shocks

P. A. Becker (George Mason University)

The flow of a radiation-dominated ideal fluid through
a standing, radiative shock is an important aspect of
accretion onto high-luminosity X-ray pulsars. A complete
understanding of the shock structure is required in order
to analyze the role of Fermi energization in producing
the power-law spectra observed from typical X-ray pulsars.
We reconsider the problem in this paper by obtaining an
analytical solution for the velocity profile based on
an approximate set of hydrodynamical equations describing
the steady, plane-parallel flow of a radiation-dominated
ideal fluid along a magnetically confined accretion column,
including the escape of radiation through the column
walls. The requirement of downstream stagnation yields
an interesting eigenvalue relation involving the accretion
rate, the radius of the column, and the energy flux at
the sonic point. Flows failing to satisfy this relation
cannot be steady, and may display a variety of temporal
behaviors. The simplicity of the analytical solution
makes it a very convenient starting point for calculations
of the emergent spectrum, which are currently underway.

If you would like more information about this abstract, please follow the link to mason.gmu.edu/~pbecker/papers/dynamics/download.html. This link was provided by the author. When you follow it, you will leave the the Web space for this meeting; to return, you should use the Back button on your browser.

The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: pbecker@hubble.gmu.edu